Clifford's Inn hall. |
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The legal university dominated by the inns of court
contained also a number of lesser colleges known as the inns of
chancery. The collective name reflects the origin of at least some
of these inns as the households of masters in Chancery, where students
might learn the forms of writs from those whose profession it was
to formulate them. In Tudor times the inns of chancery came under
the control of the inns of court, who sent barristers down each
year to deliver lectures. The educational system ended with the
Civil War, and the societies then became little more than dining
clubs.
The Inner Temple was responsible for three of these
inns. Lyons Inn (whose freehold was purchased by the Inner Temple
in 1583) was situated in what is now the Aldwych, and was demolished
in 1863; it was here that Sir Edward Coke delivered his reading
on fines in 1579. Clement's Inn, immediately to the west of the
Royal Courts of Justice, is where Shakespeare's Justice Shallow
'heard the chimes of midnight' in his misspent youth; it was sold
by its members in 1884 and demolished in 1891. Clifford's Inn was
let to law students as early as 1344, and was attended by the young
Coke in 1571; it was the last to be sold, following a Chancery suit
which established that it was held on charitable trusts (Smith
v. Kerr [1902] 1 Ch. 774). Most of Clifford's Inn was demolished
in 1934, and a monstrous office block erected on the site of the
old hall; a dull gatehouse still remains. Two window-panes from
the hall (with the arms of Bromley L.C., dated 1580, and Coke C.J.)
were removed to the Inner Temple Library, but were destroyed in
the Blitz.
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